I can only repeat myself by noting that my own argument here is just another existential contraption.
And in acknowledging that I still don’t grasp what you construe to be so important in your reaction to that.
I am a nihilist “here and now”. Meaning that there and then [in the past] I was not a nihilist. I was an objectivist instead. Meaning that there and then [in the future] I may be something else altogether. Thus the manner in which fun is understood and prioritized by me is ever and always subject to change given new experiences etc.
Evil is believed to exist by some. Okay, let them demonstrate that what they construe to be Evil [or fun for that matter] does in fact exist objectively.
With you though, I struggle to grasp how your own “I” out in the is/ought world is less deconstructed than mine. Given that you reject Good and Evil yourself.
But more importantly, you never show precisely how YOUR POSITION and behavior might lead to bad or evil consequences.
My position here is going to be reacted to by those who either do or do not believe that objective morality does in fact exist amidst human interactions. In a God world, sure, that makes sense to me. But in a No God world?
Here, in my view, other people’s priorities are no less existential contraptions than my own. And it is the gap between the manner in which I construe the implications of these existential fabrications/contraptions [re “I”] out in the is/ought world and the manner in which your own pragmatic contraptions are construed to work for you that most interest me.
After all, with the objectivists the implications embedded in moral certainty for “I” is obvious.
My own priorities regarding an issue like abortion revolve around a pro-choice point of view. But I recognize that as just a political prejudice rooted in the life that I have lived. And my position clearly leads to what others consture to be bad or evil consequences for the dead baby.
But somehow “pragmatism” enables you to fit “I” here into a slot that leaves you feeling considerably less ambivalent.
But then [alas] you seem compelled instead to go on and on and on up in the clouds of abstraction:
So you (as a rule!) make a disclaimer about yours, but you get into specific demonstrations and arguments about ALL OTHER POSITIONS you encounter. IOW you treat other people’s priorities differently, often using charged specific examples of the bad consequences they might or will lead to. You never show how your prioritization might lead to specific bad consequences. You treat your values very differently from other people’s values. All the while claiming you have no idea are so conflicted and fragmented. And yet the same values, for example compromise, negotiation and moderation keep coming up. Not others, despite your fragmentation. And demonstrate what bad consequences they might lead to.
A pro forma abstract disclaimer is not the same as what you did with fun, and with other people’s priorities. SAying: Of course I might be wrong. Of course my ideas are affected by Dasein. is not the same treatment you give to other ideas.
You have a sense of The Good, it’s just, like many objectivists, consider it open to revision. A fragmented person does not keep repeating the same goods. A fragmented person would see the potential problems of negotiation and compromise also. And so on. A nihilist does not think there is a good, or something we ought to do. A nihilist does not have the ‘I think this is good’ contraption. But you do. A nihilist does not say, I think this is good, but it’s a contraption. The nihilist does not think this is good and that is bad. The nihilist obviously will have preferences, unless he or she is extremely depressed. But not notions of the good with disclaimers. You never seem to notice this contradiction between your behavior and your philosophy, even when it is pointed out using different approaches by different posters.
What values expressed in what context from what moral vantage point? Why one set of priorities rather than another?
I’m down in my hole, you take your “pragmatic” leap and the objectivists insist that any actual consequences are either inherently good or bad.
I don’t take any fucking leap. I do not add on all the problematic tasks and self-relations you add on. As explained elsewhere.
Yes, as a matter of fact, you do. But only given the manner in which I construe a moral value embraced by someone who does not believe in objective morality. You just call it being “pragmatic” instead.
What you “add” to the discussion [in my view] are the reasons that you feel this way about abortion rather than that way. Which I then root in dasein in a manner in which you don’t. But that still doesn’t clear up [for me] how your pragmatism here is able to hold your own “I” together more firmly than moral nihilism does mine.
Which I then suspect is but another manifestation of dasein.
Why don’t you actually come down to earth, tell us about a specific situation in your life where you encountered conflicting goods. Not in the newspaper, not out of your head, not with Trump and his opponents, but with you actually involved. I can’t remember you actually presenting a real life example, and yet you have the nerve to constantly accuse others of being abstract and not doing this. I know. I have and yet you keep asking me to do this as if I haven’t.
Here I return time and time again to one of zinnat’s “groots”:
1] I was raised in the belly of the working class beast. My family/community were very conservative. Abortion was a sin.
2] I was drafted into the Army and while on my “tour of duty” in Vietnam I happened upon politically radical folks who reconfigured my thinking about abortion. And God and lots of other things.
3] after I left the Army, I enrolled in college and became further involved in left wing politics. It was all the rage back then. I became a feminist. I married a feminist. I wholeheartedly embraced a woman’s right to choose.
4] then came the calamity with Mary and John. I loved them both but their engagement was foundering on the rocks that was Mary’s choice to abort their unborn baby.
5] back and forth we all went. I supported Mary but I could understand the points that John was making. I could understand the arguments being made on both sides. John was right from his side and Mary was right from hers.
6] I read William Barrett’s Irrational Man and came upon his conjectures regarding “rival goods”.
7] Then, over time, I abandoned an objectivist frame of mind that revolved around Marxism/feminism. Instead, I became more and more embedded in existentialism. And then as more years passed I became an advocate for moral nihilism.
This example because it marks that crucial turning point in my life when I came to abandon objective morality. And because this sequence became more and more the template for all of my subsequent encounters with conflicting goods.
This experience became the first shovel of dirt to be excavated from my “hole”.
And “pragmatism” doesn’t work for me as it works for you because my frame of mind when embodying “moderation, negotiation and compromise” is no less an existential contraption.
Invite us inside your head the next time you encounter someone who challenges one of your own value judgments. Or pick something from the news. Either way note for us how you engage challenges as a “pragmatist”. Just how fractured and fragmented are you then? Just how comforted and consoled are you with the leap that you finally make? And how is this all less embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of dasein here: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529
I’ve done this. I wrote a specific case where I defended another man in a group. I described the conflicting values and how I coming from my preferences tried to affect change. It made absolutely no difference to you.
In other words, in reacting to this I didn’t share your own assessment above. I did not confirm that your defense of this man is more reasonable than my own reaction to him. If it had made a difference to me then I would be in sync with your own point of view.
Yes, I get this all the time from the objectivists. I’m just unable to grasp it from someone who shares my own assumptions about objective morality. That in all likelihood it does not exist in a No God world.
But let’s move on to another context. A conflicting good that generates headlines “in the news”. One in which most here will have a point of view that is either objectivist, pragmatic or rooted in moral nihilism.
You choose it.
In the interim though it’s back up into the clouds:
You seem to think having wants and feeling things that lead to actions and choices requires leaps. Dogs manage without philosophies and leaps. Now, sure, I sometimes feel torn, sometimes I am confused, but it is only through abstract thinking that one, as a rule, cannot takes steps to make things more like one wants. To try at least. For you it is a leap, some mental contraption. But animals, lacking our vast array of mental gadgetry, manage to do this. Your hole is due to an excess of contraptions, not a lack of them. And just to repeat: of course, I get confused. Of course I can feel conflicted both about means and goals. But unlike you I do not think I must solve enormous epistemological and universal moral behavior issues to live my life. You have nearly killed the animal in you with all your contraptions.
Note an example of this pertaining to a set of conflicting goods likely to be familiar to most of us here. How are you confused? How are you conflicted? How do you come to embody a particular moral and political narrative such that you appear [to me] to be considerably less fractured and fragmented?
Without this strangely moral looking huge project, I handle things much more as you like handle your shopping. I try to achieve what I want for myself and those I care about and for what I care about.
This “project” that you imagine me undertaking is mostly in your head. I spend a few hours a day in philosophy forums. And even then a lot of my time revolves around my “signature” threads here at ILP. The rest of the day I am doing other things – listening to music, watching movies, tuning in to the televsion programs I like, listening to the occasional NPR broadcast, following the news.
And to the extent that you approach conflicting goods as you would “going shopping” is admittedly the sort of pragmatism that is brand spanking new to me. I can’t even imagine it myself. Given that the consequences embedded in conflicting goods is often horrific to any number of men and women.
As for objectivists “running from me”, that too seems to be something that you have concocted in your head about me. Common sense tells us that in believing in objective morality, one must believe in turn that there is a “real me” able to be in sync with “the right thing to do”. And it is from this frame of mind that [psychologically] one is able to feel comforted and consoled. And thus to the extent that my own frame of mind is able to deconstruct that frame of mind is the extent to which any number of objectivists are going to react to me has they often do here. Some even resorting to what I call “huffing and puffing”, retorting, making me the issue.
Even in your own posts here the sarcasm is evident. And that’s right around the corner from contempt. So, why do I bring this out in you? Or are you also a polemicist at heart?
Or, perhaps, you are just inclined to be “smug” in these exchanges “by nature”?
Smugness is certainly something that I can project in turn. But I am about as far removed from being truly smug as one can be from down in the hole that I am in. I am no longer able to feel any degree of certainty regarding my own value judgments. My “I” here really is “in pieces”. And the abyss [nothingness] is right around the corner. I am only left with my “distractions” as I wait patiently [though sometimes impatiently] for godot.
Then back again to this part:
In any event, let’s intertwine the discussion here in an actual existential context.
Cite some actual instances of this relating to things that I post here at ILP. I am honestly unsure about the point that you are making.
I believe you. You cannot see what might be problematic even if Phyllo and I place specific concrete examples right in front of you. I did it again in this post. I have done this many times. Most of the time you are not willing to even look at your own behavior. I mention it and you repeat your general position on dasein conflicting values, without ever responding to the critique of specfiic instances of your behavior that are hypocritical int he context of your nihilism. Other times when a specific act is pointed out you say that you have also said your conclusions are existential contraptions. But when it is pointed out that you relate differently to the existential contraptions of others, you do not respond or repeat your general position. When you conclude that something is good, you cannot seem to notice that you are no longer a nihilist, since for you an objectivist is only someone who believes their values are 100% correct. But this is not the case. A nihilist cannot draw a conclusion about the good, even a tentative one. He does no believe the good exists. And this was pointed out as a specific instance, an act in your posting. A down to earth example, first pointed out by Phyllo, where you obviously and clearly think that comprimise and negotiation are good. When it is pointed out this is a contradiction, you say that it may be a contraption on your part. Fine, but you are no longer a nihilist if you draw conclusions about what is good. You just open to revision. Scientists are objectivists about scientific knowledge, but they consider ALL conclusions open to revision, it is part and parcel with scientific epistemology.
Note to others:
Link me to instances where he actually does bring this discussion out into the world of conflicting goods. Instead, in my view, he merely argues that he has done so repeatedly. Then he goes on and on and on in psycho-babble mode explaining me to myself and others. I become the issue.
I would really appreciate it if others here will link me to all of the many specific contexts in which he claims to have brought his “pragmatism” down to earth.
In particular those revolving around conflicting goods that pop up over and over and over again out in the world that we live in.
How does a “pragmatist” argue one way or the other about issues like abortion or gender roles or gun control or animal rights or homosexuality?
As a moral nihilist, I am always down in the hole that “I” have broached here. How then is that different from what KT professes here? That’s the part that most intrigues me. He doesn’t believe in objective morality but his own brand of relativism [situational ethics]leaves his own “I” considerably more intact.